Andrade, an appointee of Gov. Rick Perry, is the latest of roughly a dozen GOP elections leaders from across the country to seek the information after the Homeland Security Department granted Florida officials permission last week after a long fight.

Andrade's plans to check voter rolls against the database mark the latest chapter in an ongoing controversy over the state's efforts to combat voter fraud. Texas officials and the U.S. Justice Department already are embroiled in a court battle over a state law passed last year that requires voters to show photo identification at the polls.

Some Texas voter advocates worried that Andrade's plans, coupled with the voter ID law, would fuel confusion and discourage minority voters from going to the polls in November.

“We think this will address a problem that doesn't really exist and will create confusion about a supposed or alleged fraud that, if it happens at all, is so minuscule that it has no impact,” said Carlos Duarte, the Texas director of Mi Familia Vota, an advocacy organization.

“This is happening so close to the election that the actual effect is going to be disenfranchising people who otherwise should be eligible to vote.”

Secretary of State spokesman Rich Parsons said the state plans to start using the database “as quickly as possible,” but he did not have a time frame and could not say if the state will begin the checks before the November election.

For months, the Obama administration resisted granting Florida access to the database, but it relented after a judge ruled in the state's favor on a separate issue related to its efforts to purge noncitizens from its voting rolls.

Since then, elections leaders in nearly a dozen states have expressed interest in gaining access to the database.

But opponents of the move argue that the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program, also known as SAVE, was intended for use by government agencies verifying the immigration status of applicants for benefits and licenses, not to purge voter rolls.

Andrade wrote in the letter to Homeland Security that Texas officials asked about the SAVE program in 2007 but were told it was “not optimized or designed for voter verification.”

She wrote that she understood that the information in the database should not be used as sole confirmation of a person's citizenship status for voting purposes but said it will be “one of many important resources for confirming voter eligibility.”

The scope of voter fraud, nationally and in Texas, remains a key point of contention over states' efforts to cleanse voter rolls.

Advocates and some academics have argued that the problem is virtually nonexistent, while state officials have pointed to federal and state cases as evidence of a potential problem.

The federal government has prosecuted more than 100 defendants for election fraud since 2002, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said while defending the state's ID law. He said his office netted 50 election fraud convictions during that time.